Thursday, October 01, 2009

Would you expect that if you file a request with the state government as to how much an organization is receiving in state funds that the government would disclose your name to the organization in question?

In 2008, we submitted a complaint to the Attorney General's office regarding the late-term abortion clinic chain known as Cedar River Clinics. In the response to that complaint, Cedar River director Beverly Whipple indicated that she knew this writer had requested information from DSHS about payments (tax dollars) to her organization.

There is no way Ms. Whipple should have known this.

We had filed a "Public Disclosure" request with DSHS to find out how much money DSHS had given to Cedar River in previous years in the form of Medicaid insurance payments.

While there may not be an absolute legal guarantee of privacy in such cases, most would expect that their name wouldn't be passed along to the organization under scrutiny. At least not without some sort of consequence.

We confronted a DSHS official about this. Her answers were woefully inadequate, and mostly incoherent.

One of her arguments was that it was good for organizations receiving government money to know that there are individuals keeping them accountable. She couldn't explain why that required the citizen's actual name from being disclosed.

She then suggested that the name might have been disclosed inadvertently at one of the "regular meetings" that this official, on behalf of DSHS, holds with the state's "family planning" agencies.

We didn't know about these meetings, and this certainly didn't qualify as an excuse.

The bottom line was that this official seemed unperturbed by the privacy violation, and while she claimed she would "look into it", there have been no developments from "this investigation". And we don't expect any.

What we have learned is that the government (DSHS) admits to holding regular strategy meetings with the abortion industry to see how they can help each other, and these meetings include chit-chat, with private details, about members of the public who might be getting in their way. Ladies and gentlemen: welcome to the Land of Gregoire.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, since you were requesting information pertaining to a specific company as opposed to the compiled statistics of the governmental branch as a whole ie; the compilation of all abortions that governmental branch provided in total without revealing any providers name; before releasing that information they must submit a letter to the provider giving them a chance to review and approve or deny that informati0n be released.

In effect since you requested information pertaining to that specific company, you were requesting information that belonged to the company, and was identifiable as the company, which under the FOIA,is additionally covered under the Privacy Act.

Before responding to your post I read through both acts in their entirety to obtian this information for you.

...I would now like to say a special word to women who have had an abortion...[many people are] aware of the many factors which may have influenced your decision, and [do] not doubt that in many cases it was a painful and even shattering decision. The wound in your heart may not yet have healed. Certainly what happened was and remains terribly wrong. But do not give in to discouragement and do not lose hope. Try rather to understand what happened and face it honestly. If you have not already done so, give yourselves over with humility and trust to repentance. The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his peace ... You will come to understand that nothing is definitively lost and you will also be able to ask forgiveness from your child...With the friendly and expert help and advice of other people, and as a result of your own painful experience, you can be among the most eloquent defenders of everyone's right to life. Through your commitment to life, whether by accepting the birth of other children or by welcoming and caring for those most in need of someone to be close to them, you will become promoters of a new way of looking at human life. -- Pope John Paul II